They turned their faces toward the vast dark wilderness to the westward, redolent with mystery and fresh adventure. Presently the flickering lights of the post, which a few weeks before they had hailed so joyously, were lost to view.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SNOWSHOE JOURNEY TO INDIAN LAKE
There was yet no hint of dawn. Moon and stars shone cold and white out of a cold, steel-blue sky. The moisture of the frozen atmosphere, shimmering particles of frost, hung suspended in space. The snow crunched and creaked under their swiftly moving snowshoes.
They traveled in single file, after the fashion of the woods. Amesbury led, then followed Ahmik, after him Paul, with Dan bringing up the rear. Each hauled a toboggan, and though Paul’s and Dan’s were much less heavily laden than Amesbury’s and Ahmik’s, the lads had difficulty in keeping pace with the long, swinging half-trot of the trapper and Indian.
Presently they entered the spruce forest of a river valley, dead and cold, haunted by weird shadows, flitting ghostlike hither and thither across ghastly white patches of moonlit snow. Now and again a sharp report, like a pistol shot, startled them. It was the action of frost upon the trees, a sure indication of extremely low temperature.
Dawn at length began to break—slowly—slowly—dispersing the grotesque and ghostlike shadows. As dawn melted into day, the real took the place of the unreal, and the frigid white wilderness that had engulfed them presented its true face to the adventurous travelers.
Scarce a word was spoken as they trudged on. Amesbury and Ahmik kept the silence born of long life in the wilderness where men exist by pitting human skill against animal instinct, and learn from the wild creatures they stalk the lesson of necessary silence and acute listening. Dan, too, in his hunting experiences with his father, had learned to some degree the same lesson, and Paul had small inclination to talk, for he needed all his breath to hold the rapid pace.
Rime had settled upon their clothing, and dawn revealed them white as the snow over which they passed. The moisture from their eyes froze upon their eyelashes, and now and again it was found necessary to pick it off, painfully, as they walked.